Various apparatuses have been suggested over the years for travelling on difficult terrains. Of these, several are compact apparatuses allowing a person, for instance a person on skis, to be pushed or pulled using a track rotatably driven by a motor. Examples can be found in documents such as French patent application No. 2,431,304 (Jaulmes) published on 15 Feb. 1980 and in U.S. Pat. No. 4,519,470 (Allisio) published on 28 May 1985. Numerous other examples exist. Most of these apparatuses use a gasoline engine to rotatably drive the track. Some use an electric motor.
Apparatuses of this sort can be useful as light means of transportation, particularly where it is difficult or even forbidden to travel using a larger vehicle. For example, in terrains with a snow-covered surface, the snow could be too powdery and/or too deep to use a snowmobile. Another advantage of such apparatuses is that it is much more simple and easy to transport them in another vehicle than is the case with a larger and heavier vehicle, for instance a snowmobile.
Unfortunately, none of the previously-suggested apparatuses has proven fully adapted to the very rigorous winter conditions encountered during parts of the year in places where such apparatuses are likely to be useful. For instance, a very cold temperature can significantly hinder the reliability and the autonomy of an apparatus using an electric motor powered using batteries. In the case of a gasoline engine, the combination of cold weather and heat released from the engine can cause ice and compacted snow to build up at sensitive points of the apparatus. Moreover, milder temperatures are more likely to cause water infiltrations into the apparatus, which can then result in failures difficult to repair, especially if they occur deep into the forest or in other places that are difficult to access.
Also, the previously-suggested apparatuses do not allow an electric generator to be easily transported to places that are difficult to access. Numerous other limitations are challenges exist.
The compact pulling apparatus and methods disclosed in Applicant's PCT/CA2011/050202 filed on 15 Apr. 2011 (published on 20 Oct. 2011 under publ. No. WO 2011/127607) provide very good solutions capable of overcoming a vast number of limitations and challenges associated with previously-suggested apparatuses. Nevertheless, further improvements on many different aspects of the basic concept are always needed and desirable so as to even further improve the technology in this technical field.